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Frequently Asked Questions about Partners for Excellence

Who are you anyway? What is the scope of your consulting and education? Who do you typically work with? What are your products and services?

Who Are We?

In 1991 we formed a group of experienced, independent professionals to help people become more effective in managing their manufacturing and distribution resources. In our experience, the truly successful companies have not gotten where they are from massive project-type consulting, pretty notebooks with nice flowcharts, trendy "programs of the month," acronyms, or buzzwords. Nor did they focus primarily on systems, software, and computer gimmickry. Instead their focus has been on people and inter-functional work processes. This is where we can help.

The standard of excellence for a product-based company continues to move higher, presenting greater challenges. Meeting customer and market expectations better than anyone else is only the beginning. For a sustainable advantage, you also need to do it at low cost. In addition, you need to be agile and flexible to change as market expectations, technologies, and competition change. Primary in your drive for excellence is the ability to develop a business plan that drives effective sales, distribution, and operations plans, which in turn drive effective execution of all those plans. This is the first step in meeting and exceeding customer expectation, lowering cost, and gaining organizational flexibility. Partners for Excellence has guided hundreds of companies to develop such processes.

Click here for a list of Senior Partners.

Click here for biographical sketches of the Senior Partners.

Where We Excel

Partners for Excellence develops and delivers superior consulting and education programs in the area of manufacturing and distribution. We help companies understand and get the most from proven tools and methods though focused, tailored education, and hands-on consulting. We help apply those tools in controlled situations and provide proven and successful implementation methodology. We are catalysts for change and, in that role, we help your people develop solutions that will work, while ensuring that your people accept ownership to make those solutions highly successful. Too often, technically correct solutions fail to bring promised results because users don't own them.

We are expert in meeting the needs of our customers with the implementation of effective resource planning (ERP and MRP II) and supply chain management systems. Resource Planning balances supply and demand inside your company to meet the needs of your customers and markets. It provides a unified vision of where the business is headed with Sales & Operations Planning as you balance sales and markets, distribution, and the capability of your operations and suppliers. Master Scheduling keeps that vision alive and up-to-date with the day-to-day changes and impacts on the business. Material Requirements Planning prioritizes the detailed activities to support that vision. Various integrated execution tools such as Plant Scheduling, Supplier Scheduling, Demand Pull, Kanban, and other visual controls provide the follow-up to ensure that each of these detailed activities happen and are coordinated through the organization. Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II) provides the tool set to communicate inside the company where the business is going, and then coordinate the activities to make sure you get there.

Supply Chain Management reaches beyond the boundaries of the enterprise to engage your customer's customer, your distribution and transportation providers, and your supplier's suppliers. Here, more than anywhere else, the tools and approaches are being applied in creative ways. E-commerce and changing information technology has supported this evolution. In its simplest form, Value/Supply Chain Management focuses on speeding up the flow of information between value/supply chain partners, trading off inventory and lead time for information. It provides a structure to configure your value/supply chain interfaces to your customers and suppliers. In its most advanced form, Value/Supply Chain Management enables "virtual organizations," where traditional partnerships have been replaced by a closer, more intensive, and effective collaboration. Value/Supply Chain Management is fostering a broader use of the tool set, blurring the boundaries between customers and suppliers, enabling new relationships.

Who Can We Help?

Partners for Excellence addresses the educational needs of all manufacturing and distribution organizations, including top executives, middle management, supervision, functional specialists, and process owners. Our topics are structured so they can be tailored to fit the needs of each part of the organization.

For example, executive management will get an overview of the concepts, techniques, and tools that are required to manage the business. More specific and detailed content will be provided to the cross-functional teams of middle managers, functional specialists, and supervision. The process owners will get in-depth and concentrated information that is focused on their specific process requirements.

All sessions are held on-site. This allows all your people to hear the same message in a short, concentrated time frame. On-site sessions are a very cost effective and time efficient method of educating your people. They are designed to get maximum involvement and participation from the attendees. Brainstorming and discussion activities are held throughout the sessions. They are designed to highlight the issues and problems and generate discussions on how the concepts and techniques will be used to solve the problems and achieve the expected benefits.

Then Partners for Excellence rolls up their sleeves and guides, helps and ensures that all your people properly and efficiently implement and utilize the appropriate tools and technologies. We work with you as often and as long as needed, to ensure that the "theories" become institutionalized best practice in your organization. We're hands-on with the process owners and functional specialists, while ensuring we keep senior management appraised and advised of the progress and key issues.

Our clients include some of the world's most recognized names.

Our Specific Products

Consulting to move you quickly from implementation, to operation, to benefits.

Executive Briefings to help you understand alternatives, approaches, how to "make it happen".

Assessments, both before and after implementing new resource planning approaches.

Tailored on-Site Education Programs to give your people the tools to implement the system and make it work - the first time!

Supplementary Materials and Services, including the Instructor's Manuals for self-taught education on Sales and Operations Planning and Master Scheduling, our Sales and Operations Planning Handbook for implementing S&OP, Sales and Operations Planning software, software research, and books on software evaluation.